The mysteries of the murder of the 14-year-old Zainab began to unfold!

Rajana Hamiah wrote in “Al Akhbar”:

Zainab Al-Husseini, a minor under 14, was burned in Burj Al-Barajneh. But the crime of cremation did not end with his death, on the contrary, new criminal chapters were started whose perpetrators persisted in whipping the victim, even in the “glory” of his death, holding her responsible for what happened. Thus, the case of Zainab is linked to the path of a cultural system based on harassment and the responsibility of the victim, even if he is a minor.

At the end of last week, a horrific crime rocked Burj Al-Barajneh and killed 14-year-old Zainab Al-Husseini. The stories that accompanied the crime were numerous and their chapters divergent, what drew attention was the large number of “eyewitnesses” who preceded the official investigations in their analysis.

In the many accounts that have been woven about the girl’s death, two are overwhelming. One of them says that the girl left her parents’ house in Chiyah 12 days before the crime and took refuge in M. s. And her son AS, and there was another boy in the same house who was identified in anecdotal accounts as “love” A. s. The day before the crime, a dispute occurred between Zainab on the one hand and the other child and AP On the other hand, the victim left the house and asked for help. S., AS’s cousin, then the latter came with her to the house and fought with her uncle and cousin, who stabbed him with a knife. Then her uncle and cousin threatened to burn down the house, which happened. The house burned down and Zainab was inside.

The other story says that when Zainab left her house in Chiyah, she went to her aunt’s house, and from there she called her father and told him that she had had an accident, before leaving her aunt’s house elsewhere. . This account, as reported by some from her father, says that the latter was surprised by a call from a police station asking him to identify the body of his daughter.

What happened next was the beginning of Zainab’s story. Those that were written up by the people, as well as the initial news issued by the Internal Security Forces, which was leaked – as usual – and transmitted through WhatsApp, even before it became an official investigation. Regardless of the merits of the crime, Zainab’s story highlights many cases in which blaming the victim was stronger than the act of murder. The crime is no longer limited to three young people, since many participated in the crime, through the trial and flogging of the victim. To understand this, it is enough to read the first security news and people whisper about the “jacket” and the perception of a whole society towards “the girl who runs away from his parents’ house”.

A tour of the neighborhood where the crime occurred is enough to understand the whole context that accompanied Zainab’s story after her death. In Ain al-Sikka, where the crime happened, people whisper about what happened. When asked about what happened here four days ago, silence prevails, as most of them do not want to speak on the grounds that “the girl has become the home of truth!” As for others, who are “upset” by what happened, they correct their narration towards the victim, “The defect you are telling about … But they say that Hady was the girl who went to MS’s house.” Previously, his will was not good, and his son and nephew were taking drugs. “Speakers often borrow, at the end of their woven narrative about the victim, common phrases when the” scandal “occurs, such as” God hides to the daughters of the world “and” Our Lord has said it. “

These expressions do not carry surprises. What the people in Burj Al-Barajneh said is nothing more than a normal path in a “town” that considers on its list of customs and traditions that the crime that occurred would not have happened “if she had not come here.” This path is natural, especially when it comes to a female victim under a deeply entrenched system based on a “culture of bullying,” according to activist human rights lawyer Manar Zuaiter. Here in the village of Burj Al-Barajneh, there are accounts for families, so you should not be surprised if someone confronts you saying, “You know about families, that is, what we are trying to solve.” The solutions here mean that we issue a statement condemning what happened, and then everything ends. In Zainab’s case, this appears to be what will happen, and it tends to be what happens in cases of violence and murder whose “heroines” are women, since “the victim is always blamed,” says Zuaiter. This is the result of the cultural system that often accompanies the “B” word. When Zainab was killed, most of the comments revolved around that “but”, like saying, for example, “Forbidden, but if they didn’t come, they wouldn’t have turned into what happened.” A phrase that was repeated in more than one language. This “Bas” is the path that justified many crimes and mitigated their impact, and it is today that will justify the murder of Zainab.

Through the presentation of similar facts, the equation becomes the following: the victim is forgotten and everyone is led to the motives that “exempt the perpetrators from the horror of the crime,” according to Zuaiter. This equation can be translated in the case of Zainab, by “reputation”, “honor” and “reputation”, society has forgotten that whoever killed a minor was murdered first and that there were 3 criminals who committed “one of the most heinous crimes ”, in addition to the tools of crime, which makes it a crime. Zainab committed “3 crimes”.

However, they all went to prosecute the minor for her actions, taking into account that if it was necessary to talk about the tragedy of Zainab, then she had to leave the family home, where she was exposed to physical and psychological violence and therefore left the house each time, the last of which was before the crime. “This can also be evidenced by the complaint that the girl filed against her father for her exposure to violence,” says lawyer Leila Awada from the Kafa Violence and Exploitation Organization.

In societies that prosecute a child, such as Zainab, “we have not created a total rejection of sexual and physical violence against women outside the framework of the guilt and condemnation of the victim,” according to Zuaiter, and this is framed in a context integrated into a cultural environment that frames the problem and projects its events, a context that “begins with education Through the media, serials and society” … and even in the investigations of the security forces that they pursue crimes. Despite all the training that the security forces have received to address the different approaches to the issue of violence against women, the issue in the security news has social connotations that “create justifications among people for the occurrence of crime, and the justification becomes like: Certainly there is something like that. ” Even while writing the news as well, that the victim often suffers atrophy and the act of killing her, as stated in the initial news story that “an apartment was burned down and a charred body was found inside it.” Then the first investigation is completed after that to further lash the victim and reduce the power of the crime. What links the members of the case is drug abuse (…) It is probable that Zainab at the time of his death was under the influence of drugs, ”noting that according to the leaked investigation itself, he is still waiting for a blood test, to show whether the victim used drugs or not.

The Zainab case recalls the case of the minor who was raped in the Dahr Al-Ain region of Tripoli by three young women. The comments focus on blaming the victim on the government of “Ino Shu, whose beginning is Moa,” which was cynically removed from the act in security records and in the judiciary that put an end to the act committed. The girl removes the three young people with a bond not exceeding one hundred thousand pounds. It is possible to return to another incident, no less ugly, such as the case of the murder of Manal Al-Asi at the hands of her husband, Muhammad Al-Nahaili, where the president of the Beirut Criminal Court, Helena Iskandar, revived the honor crime in his lighter sentence against Al-Nahili. Iskandar donned the clothes of a social guardian and decided to reduce Al-Nahili’s death sentence to five years in prison, in accordance with article 252 of the Penal Code. And it is the article that says that “the perpetrator who committed his crime in a state of great anger will benefit from a mitigating excuse (…)”!

She killed Zainab, but the act of killing did not end with her burning, as this act continues to this day with her flogging by society in which the laws are still ink on paper, to leaked investigations, to the state that awaits the occurrence of the crime without preceeding it with prevention and social protection, the Judicial Power for the Protection of Minors also intervened, especially because Zainab, the minor, had filed a complaint for domestic violence. The problem here is in the role of “minor” juvenile justice in expanding the concept of risk. Those responsible for what happened to Zainab are the triad of the father, who became a hero after the murder of her daughter, and society and the state.